A recent sales study indicates that consumption of seafood dishes in Bay City restaurants has increased by 30 percent during the past five years. Yet there are no currently operating city restaurants whose specialty is seafood. Moreover, the majority of f

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A recent sales study indicates that consumption of seafood dishes in Bay City restaurants has increased by 30 percent during the past five years. Yet there are no currently operating city restaurants whose specialty is seafood. Moreover, the majority of families in Bay City are two-income families, and a nationwide study has shown that such families eat significantly fewer home-cooked meals than they did a decade ago but at the same time express more concern about healthful eating. Therefore, the new Captain Seafood restaurant that specializes in seafood should be quite popular and profitable.

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be addressed in order to decide whether the conclusion and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to the questions would help to evaluate the conclusion.

The author of the statement believes that the new Captain Seafood restaurant which specializes in seafood would be popular and it will earn decent profits. This conclusion is based on a premise that consumption of the seafood dishes increased by 30 percent and people of Bay City, which are consisted majorly of two-income families, are inclined not to eat home-cooked meals. The author’s argument is unclear because of the lack of supporting evidence. In order to be clear, the author needs answering several vital questions.

First, the author needs to address the question whether the 30 percent increase would be enough to offer customers for a specialized restaurant to meet the taste of people who eat fish. Since there is no evidence showing the numbers of people who prefer eating sea food, then the mere 30 increase cannot be valid. It is possible that only ten people consumed sea food in the restaurants in the past, and with such a 30 percent increase, it is now 13 of them. These numbers may not be enough for a restaurant to be profitable with all the costs it primarily have to face.

Secondly, does the national study reflect the situation of the Bay City? As the result of the study is the average inclination of people throughout a whole nation, it allows some smaller places to be different from the total. Then, it is possible that the people of the Bay City may be even strictly inclined to eat homemade foods and this weakens the authors’ argument.

Finally, even if all the previous answers give credence to the author’s conclusion, the author should ask whether the mere specialization in sea food would make this restaurant profitable or not. To answer this question the author needs to rule out any possibility that the people do not choose such a fish food restaurant. Are the foods affordable? It is highly possible that majority of the people in the Bay City, even with two-incomes, cannot afford to pay the cost of their food. Is food delicious enough to attract customers? The quality of the fish dishes might not be good enough to attract enough people. And why people choose this restaurant if the other restaurant serve the same fish dishes beside other foods? The menu of the other restaurant may be more colorful with all the options offering the costumers. Then the new sea food restaurant would not be profitable.

In short, as discussed, the author of the statement fails to give a clear argument. There are several vital questions remaining unaddressed in the argument, whose answers help us to evaluate the conclusion. Since the argument in the current shape is ambiguous, the author conclusion based on such an argument cannot be tenable.

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Average: 8 (1 vote)
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Comments

argument 1 -- OK

argument 2 -- OK

argument 3 -- OK

Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 458 350
No. of Characters: 2177 1500
No. of Different Words: 203 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.626 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.753 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.56 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 157 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 115 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 80 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 47 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.913 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.182 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.435 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.314 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.517 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.117 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5